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Comment by ZanyProgrammer | Hacker News Reader

I hear ya about VB6, I think that making it incompatible with VB.Net was a mistake. But ASP.NET webforms? Ugh. I maintain a slightly older website using webforms, and it feels like I'm in the web development dark ages. Its a literal ghetto of tech that is used no where else.

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Dunno. There's certainly a large appeal in being able to drag-n-drop controls out, double click a button and write "someControl.BackgroundColor = Red" and having it all just work.

I agree it isn't a great way to develop for the web, as in embracing web tech, but it's a very convenient way to make forms. Even having your controls keep state (the terrible viewstate) is quite convenient.

Have you ever been to corporate america? ASP.NET webforms is used heavily everywhere including but definitely not limited to marketing agencies, the financial sector (investment and banking down on through collection agencies), healthcare, call centers, etc etc etc.

If you approach a lot of those places and show them something like AngularJS they'll be like "where are all of the high-level tags and rich components that I can just drag and drop"? And then you'll realize that you're not actually in the ghetto.

There's a reason that webforms didn't die when Microsoft introduced MVC, but instead they started bringing MVC features into webforms because so many people use it.

Yes I work for a stereotypical .Net shop. Just because it's ubiquitous in the Enterprise doesn't mean it's not crap. I generally love MSFTs dev tools, but web forms are still a ghetto compared to MVC.

"Just because it's ubiquitous in the Enterprise doesn't mean it's not crap."

This. Look at Java, and the bloated mess it has become. Look at XML and the bloated mess it is.

Popular doesn't mean it's good. There are plenty of individuals at the top that don't know cisco from crisco.

Sure, but it's crap that gets those Enterprises from A to B.

What I want to know is, what better crap is there that offers the ease of use that webforms does? If there's nothing better then this is the best crap we have.

It's kind of like how gas-guzzling, environment-ruining automobiles in general are crappy, but what practical alternatives exist that actually cover all of the use cases?

Programmers seem to as a matter of principle be vehemently opposed to the notion of cost / benefit being at least as important as "technical correctness" or whatever you want to call it. If its cheap, sustainable, and satisfies user requirements, that should be enough, should it not?

I see it as the same reason chefs don't like cutting carrots with table knives. It's a lot cheaper than a nice knife, and the carrots get all mushed up in the stew either way. But a nice knife is just a joy to use, and when you cut carrots all day, you want something that is a joy to use.

I don't disagree with a chef having a good knife to cut carrots, I disagree with a chef needing a new knife for every batch of carrots he cuts, especially when lesser chefs will have to come and tend to these carrots with special cuts (and you must understand these special cuts) 2, 3, 5 years down the road.

My knife isn't perfect, but I'll keep just it and no other life long if I have to. I don't need a new one for each batch of carrots.

But when collaborating on a curry, I don't want to use the same knife as the guy who cut the tomatoes wants to use. That knife looks blunt and rusty to me.

From my own perspective, I don't want to limit my career choices to the MSFT (enterprise) ghetto. At least with ASP.NET MVC you're at least using a paradigm that's common outside the enterprise-verse, and translates into being able to learn and pick up other stuff. As for web forms, unless you want to be limited to a niche, they don't seem that great for career advancement.

I think AngularJS is going to be the next WebForms for enterprise 5 years down the road.

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